The jaunty “Tonight with the Dogs I’m Sleeping” sits squarely on its 4/4 beat while Oldham has fun tipping his throat back and howling: “I’m all bark and she’s all biiiiiiiite.” Co-written with country great John Anderson, “The Water’s Fine” chugs along merrily in the tyre tracks of well-worn Nashvillian chord progressions, as Anderson’s companionable voice joins Oldham’s from the passenger seat.
Like a roadhouse bartender, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy serves familiar comforts and soaks up the world’s strange spillages on his new album Will Oldham surrounds himself with seasoned Nashville locals on a lovely, lullsome country-pop album.
Later, against the farty brass parp and accordion lurch of a polka called “Guns Are for Cowards”, he asks listeners: “If you could do it without anyone saying that you’d committed a crime/ Who would you shoot in the face?/ Who would you shoot in the brain?/ Who would you shoot in the back?” More curious is his follow-up question: “Then how would you feel?/ Exalted?
The Purple Bird – Will Oldham’s 22nd album as Bonnie “Prince” Billy – may be one of the warmest, mellowest country-pop releases of recent years, but that doesn’t stop him using it to vent a little spleen about modern America.
Produced by David “Ferg” Ferguson (best known for engineering Johnny Cash’s later albums and producing John Prine) and recorded with some of the most seasoned session musicians in Nashville, The Purple Bird is reassuringly well-crafted and woodsy.
